A public/private partnership in personalized cancer care

Abstract

Personalized cancer care means that a treatment is delivered to the patient in a very directed fashion. No longer is a one-size fits all approach acceptable. More importantly, the standard approach using non-targeted chemotherapy, treating many patients to help an unknown few, is rapidly falling in disfavor to therapies paired with unique biomarkers. Recent success in targeting patient subpopulations harboring RAF mutations has shown promise for accelerating the drug development process. Moreover, this success suggests the need for increased focus on cancer diagnostics. Biomarker discovery, however, has been a substantial challenge, limited by the availability of a large number of high quality, well-annotated specimens. Here, we describe the development of one of the world’s largest molecular databases of human cancer that will have a wide spectrum of utility in the years to come as the clinical data mature. The database supports a broad initiative in personalized medicine called “Total Cancer Care”. This represents a successful private/public partnership between and an academic medical center, a large network of community hospitals, and a large pharmaceutical company.